Jews By Choice' Face Challenges

September 24, 1985|by ROSA SALTER, The Morning Call

Tina Obenski of Allentown used to be president of her Methodist church's youth group, but she could never understand "how people could look at Jesus and say 'That is God.' " Chris Hutchinson sang in choir and played saxophone in a musical group at a Berks County Evangelical Congregational church he attended as a teen-ager, but he always "felt funny" because he "never accepted Christ as my Savior." And Maryellen Eichelbaum of Easton speaks of the time after her marriage when she jokingly would call herself a "Cashew" - a cross between a Catholic and a Jew.

Today, all three have happily converted to Judaism. They have become, in the terminology of some Jewish leaders, "Jews by Choice."

No one is keeping close track of the number of American Protestants, Catholics - or members of no religion - who have undertaken Jewish conversion, a fact decried by some Jewish sociologists who would love to have a better grasp on the phenomenon. The American Jewish Archives in Cincinnati estimates it gets reports of 500-600 conversions a year, but that is in only one of American Jewry's four major branches, the Reform movement. The total number of conversions is virtually unknown, since the rest are scattered among the Orthodox, Conservative and Reconstruction ist branches and are largely a matter of local record keeping.

"There is no central registry," said Leora Issacs, a researcher with the American Jewish Committee in New York.

But conversions do happen, and with greater frequency than many think - especially non-Jews who tend to see Judaism as a closed society, one that does not seek out new members.

But in a religion where accelerating assimilation has been seen as a threat for generations, and where some still question that anyone would voluntarily take upon themselves the suffering and discrimination that too often has been the Jews' lot, the message that converts willingly choose Judaism is welcome indeed.

"I feel so comfortable with my Judaism that I can hardly believe I was ever anything else," said Eichelbaum, reflecting the contentment and sense of belonging that many converts come to share.

Every convert has his or her own story to tell about why Judaism appealed to them, although most still revolve around marriage to a Jew. "Mixed marriages," in which a Jewish person marries a non-Jew, are on the rise, although they continue to be frowned upon by many Jews. And many rabbis, even in the more liberal branches of Judaism, will not marry a couple in a synagogue unless the non-Jewish partner converts.

"I have had people who convert because they are attracted to Judaism, but most people convert because they are attracted to a Jew," said Rabbi Rebecca Alpert, a professor at Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Philadelphia. That was Obenski's situation 16 years ago, after she met her husband-to-be at a fraternity party on the University of Pennsylvania campus. She was a nurse, he was studying to become a veterinarian, and the two decided it was love at first sight.

"I was brought up Methodist. I went to the Billy Graham Crusade. I was president of the youth group and I was in the choir," she explained. "But I had met Mike, and he was Jewish and his religion meant a lot to him, so it was very important that I convert. But I did it because it was expected. It was back in the '60s, and you didn't - or I didn't in the household to bring up a child, and I was willing to give it a shot."

At first it was difficult. "It's very difficult when you first convert. You go into a temple, and you feel you have a neon sign over your head, and it says 'Convert! Convert! Not a real Jew!' " Obenski said.

Though her parents were never particularly religious, she says, and didn't put up much resistance to her conversion (Her mother was raised Russian Orthodox and her father was a Christmas-and-Easter Episcopalian), other relatives and friends in the little coal region town whereshe grew up didn't make it any easier. Most had never met anyone Jewish and "had a very stereotyped idea" about what Jews were like.

But the more Obenski studied the religion, the more she realized that Jewish beliefs fit her own ideas.

"I think the whole theology of the religion is meaningful. It's not a bunch of dogma," Obenski said. "It goes back 5,000 years, and of course all religion is a matter of interpretation, but I find I have no questions with the theology, and when I do, I can choose not to believe it. . . . I think that's nice because I can have my own views and argue with the rabbi. I never had that choice with the minister."

Obenski explained that she especially likes the Jewish stress on ethical action - now, in this life - preferring that to what she sees as Christianity's overstress on faith and life after death.

The idea that a person could "live a miserable life" and then, on their deathbed, say they believed in Jesus and that would get them into heaven "never set right with me," she said. "It seemed so unfair."